Over the years we’ve cooked a lot of recipes. Some have called for a battalion of ingredients and some have even begged for certain items to measured within a tenth of a gram. Taken literally, a recipe inherently calls for some semblance of perfection in the kitchen–you have all the ingredients, all the equipment, all the spices, etc.–and depending on whose recipe you’re reading, deviating from the script can be hazardous.

This sort of cooking is fine and well for the situation that calls for it, but more often than not in our lives, we cook in a much looser format. Life isn’t perfect, we aren’t perfect, so why live under the engineered construct of cooking by the recipe, where the ante is usually some level of perfection that most kitchens don’t have?

And while I learned to cook to some extent by following recipes, what stuck with me has not always been the exact composition of a recipe, but the underlying structure that most good recipes follow. The simplest example is pasta. Why does Yummly need to show us 300 variations on Pasta Primavera? Why do we need 300 separate units of information to tell us how to make different versions of the same dish structure? The formula for Pasta Primavera is: 1) Pasta, 2) Vegetable, 3) Meat, if you wish. Why don’t we just tell people the basic structure of Pasta Primavera, tell them the characteristics of each element in the structure (e.g., Pasta: any long pasta works great, don’t use stuffed pastas; Vegetables: sturdy green veggies work best, don’t use potatoes…) and implore them to find the combinations that they like?

This is a question I aim to explore more. I believe that if you pay attention to how a dish is structured, rather than cooking each variation of it one by one in a recipe, you can have a much more fulfilling experience in the kitchen. You will gain intelligence about cooking, not just knowledge, and you will be more adept in the kitchen as a result.

A recipe is written like classical music–you follow the score, and note-by-note on the page, you create music. What I’m proposing is that we all start thinking of cooking more like Jazz–learn the basic scales and the right chords, then go off and jam out.

The Jazz approach brings cooking back down to Earth, embracing our culinary imperfections and whims, not making us feel bad that we don’t fit the rules dictated by a recipe. If we can teach people to become better improvisers in the kitchen, we can lower the barriers to cooking at home, and hopefully create new a new habit for the average American. I believe that we are smarter than the caricatures of chefs (professional and otherwise) that we see on the Food Network, and that we can teach people how to be intelligent in the kitchen, not simply follow orders.

Which brings me to the image at the top of this post. Here is a structure for Bo Ssam, that carnivorous Korean classic that has sat at the center of many a dinner party for us. In the image, the key elements of a Bo Ssam are unpacked, but we try to give guidelines rather than instructions on how to create your own. It’s an imperfect, initial attempt, but I want to see if it makes sense to people and if it can be the first step toward getting people to approach cooking a different way. This is the start, and it will evolve.

Go on, download the Bo Ssam Framework here and try it on your own. Let us know on Twitter or in the comments below how you did.

awesome analogy, but just a quick note that the structure of jazz is more than just knowing the chords and jamming out … the song is still the framework, and the improvisation in jazz is about trying to go as far as you can within the chordal framework of that song (this more honed definition of jazz has probably even more things to do with cooking/recipes and recognizing the patterns of food than just jamming out with no direction … though a free jazz approach to cooking could produce interesting results).

Love the breakdown on the infographic too. Will try to decipher and use for cooking, but I’m also curious what other meat dishes this structure of acid/meat/base could be directly applied to in everyday cooking?

thanks for the comment brian. yes, im generalizing a bit that jazz is ‘just’ chords and scales leading into a jam session–i recognize there’s much more than that. but im trying to communicate this general sense of learning the ‘framework’ of something then adapt ing as necessary. the emphasis is on understanding base concepts, versus cataloging a library of reference documents.

o if the meal is a song, how do we teach people how to stay in key? how do we teach people how to assemble verses within the song? how do we teach them how songs are structured?

it’s a fine balance in trying to get the right metaphor, but my sentiment is to try and do something to break people away from simply following instructions.

I would say staying within a certain flavor would be your key … as the spectrum of flavors could probably be mapped out similar to sonic or color spectrum. That would be an interesting analysis.

Of course, one dish can have many flavors, and the value or harmony of the song (or dish) relies on the balancing of all of the individual parts.

I’d say that just as a musician can put their instrument between themselves and the audience, so can a chef with his food. The physical food is an instrument, meaningless in the hands of a novice, but can produce art in the hands of an expert.

An entire dinner would be a performance, hopefully all fitting together into a cohesive sound and experience.

Really like this – it’s how I approach cooking myself. I read recipes to understand the through-line of the structure – what processes occur and the execution, then mess around with ingredients to hand – improvise as I go along, and because I have focused on the process and elements involved in previous dishes, I have confidence enough to roll with it.

[...] this away, you can intensify the flavor of a meat. Recently we described this as a key step in our Bo Ssam framework and we’ve even packaged together one curing blend that we’ve used with great [...]

[...] that traced back to food and if nothing else, we at Studiofeast want to do our part to inspire and educate people. We aim to show that cooking is not only a gateway to great eating, but the key component [...]